Monday, March 28, 2011

Lie to me O Vibhishana

Recently I have started to watch an interesting TV serial called Lie to Me by Fox network. (yeah, I hear you, how ironic!). Its about a detective agency, Lightman Group, led by Dr. Carl Lightman, finding truth via applied psychology predominantly studying facial expressions. The facial expressions, or microexpressions to be precise, of protoganists are butted with the help of similar expressions exhibited by celebrities and politicians, which are pretty convincing at times, not to mention the good humor. The script is really sharp as well as the apt references to the celebrities and politicians capturing the moment of rubbing their noses or twitching their ears. Obviously there are espisodes with unnecessary elements that feels like "filling up" the one-hour episode, but most of the time the script manages to keep one's attention.

"A demon kidnaps a Queen. The King and his army destroy him. If only Ramayana were that simple."

This is how Amar Chitra Katha advertises its illustrated story book Ramayana. What a lovely one-liner! Of course the book has to cut several corners to make the story simple and to confine in 60 pages, but the original Ramayana (in whatever form we have now, I am not getting into the debate of what was the original-original version by Valmiki) contains fascinating descriptions of human tendencies.

Growing up, no kid can be not awed by Hanuman's superhuman strength, bravery and exploits. Be it the ever-entrenched image of Hanuman carrying the mountain in the APT parcel trucks, leaping to Sun thinking of it as a mango, or setting Lanka to fire with his tail - his exploits form a fertile core of any child's imagination. But after a while, the "Santa Claus" reality sets in, and one starts to look beyond the superhuman strengths. Only now, a more powerful picture begins to emerge as one reads through the original slokas, oozing with juicy details - that of Hanuman's supreme intelligence. Time and again, even in the smallest of incidents, his intelligence sparkles like a diamond and uplifts the story to a new level.

One such relatively minor, but very important incident is the surrendering of vibhIShaNa to rAma. Various accounts simplify this incident so much that it appears like vibhIShaNa came and begged Rama and the latter just accepted him. ACK for eg, devotes 3 pictures for this incident. But in the original story, this incident runs upto 149 slokas, with various monkey counsellors offering different insights and advices to Rama. Rama listens patiently to everybody and makes his own decision, justified by his own dharma. Reminds me of the Hindi proverb, "suno sab ki karo man ki".

After all the monkeys give their opinions and tell Rama "do this, do that", finally speaks Hanuman and gives a brilliant analysis of vibhIShaNa. His thought process is so unobtrusive with striking clarity, it makes me wonder why this is story is not part of MBA courses. If I were a tenured MBA professor, I would ask the students to do a comparitive psycho-beneficial analysis of a merger with a rebel following a breakout in a familial company. Just kidding. No, I was serious.

But our main focus is the beauty of Sanskritam, so I'm going to present a few beautiful sloka-s. While the original sloka is provided, I have rewritten a few of them into prose format, to show that Ramayana, as they say, is indeed atIva saralaa and madhura manjulaa.

तव सचिवै: यद् उक्तम् अर्थम् अनर्थ निमित्तम्, तत्र दोषम् पश्यामि । अत: न क्रिया उपपद्यते ॥
I am perceiving an error in what was advised by your counselors assigned to look into advantages and disadvantages. It is not possible to judge his character that way.

नियोगात् ऋते सामर्थ्यम् अवबोद्धुम् न शक्यते, (परन्तु) सहसा विनियोग: दोषवान् इति मे प्रतिभाति ।
Without entrusting any work, it is not possible to understand his ability. Also one cannot entrust a work sooner to a stranger.

न त्वस्य ब्रुवतो जातु लक्ष्यते दुष्ट भावता ।
प्रसन्नम् वदनम् च अपि तस्मान् मे न अस्ति सम्शयः ॥
I am not seeing any bad intention at all in his talk. His face is bright. A deceitful person does not approach so fearlessly and confidently. His expression too is not bad. Hence, I have no doubt in him.

आकारः चाद्यमानो अपि न शक्यो विनिगूहितुम् ।
बलाद् हि विवृणोति एव भावम् अन्तर्गतम् नृणाम् ॥It is not possible to hide the facial expressions, even if it is concealed. The internal intent of the person certainly gets revealed by itself.

One interesting word here is bhaavam. From the root bhU - being, bhAvam means "the state of being". Hanuman observes that it is not possible for one to hide one's own internalized state of being.

Thus Hanuman studies two important details - voice modulation and facial expression, which no other monkeys observe. He does not go by words of vibhIShaNa, but goes right into his heart. Finally he concludes his speech in style, second to none of modern software consultants:

"O Rama the best among the wise! I have told this to the best of my ability about vibhIShaNa. After hearing my words, you are indeed the final judge of the issue."

Hanuman's approach is very clinical - first he states the purpose of his own speech, points out the logical errors of others, digs vibhIShaNa's presence, throws in a few quotes, examines his real purpose (ie to become King of Lanka), studies his body language, presents the facts to his manager and finally allows him to make a decision!